In Cleveland, we have a popular restaurant called "Melt Bar and Grilled". They feature several dozen different types of grilled cheese sandwiches. Most of them are stuffed with various other foods - various meats, veggies, pierogis, etc. This seems to be a popular trend for restaurants, so the food isn't just simple grilled cheese sandwiches.

FWIW, Melt Bar and Grilled has been featured on the Travel Channel and Food Network.

In case you care to see the types of sandwiches they serve: http://www.meltbarandgrilled.com/

For dinner, yes. For lunch, I go to whatever's convenient and sounds tasty. Heck, I'll pay six bucks for a ham and cheese sandwich I could have just as easily brought from home, because I'm lazy. A grilled cheese sandwich I couldn't bring from home (well, not if I wanted it hot) so it's even better!

PS. I'm surprised the paleo-diet nuts haven't shown up in these grilled cheese threads yet...

Nuts? Some people who follow paleo style eating are definitely more... evangelist than others, but let's not tar all cavemen with the same brush.

I don't eat grilled cheese, but I never thought it was particularly healthy before reading up on nutrition and experimenting with a more paleolithic style of eating, and I certainly don't now; but neither are many other restaurant chains' signature offerings. You can eat them if you like, it's your own body after all.

(Aside: My impartiality to grilled cheese is possibly also because I'm British, and you can't get a decent cheese-and-beans toastie here for love nor money; it's nothing without the beans, I say. Nothing!)

Dammit, I shouldn't have cast that summon-paleo-nut spell.

Actually I used to make fun of the paleo diet, then I tried it and discovered it really is a good way to lose weight (if nothing else) without feeling hungry. On the other hand I regained the weight as soon as I came off the paleo diet, and I find it too hard to maintain -- there's very few places you can actually buy a paleo-compliant meal, and I was getting pretty darn sick of eating the same few meals over and over again.

Also, there's grilled cheese.

"On the other hand I regained the weight as soon as I came off the [insert name here] diet ..."

There are two kinds of diets, lose weight now diets and lifestyle/habit diets. Both diets are subject to the "but I regained the weight" issue, the lose weight now type probably more so.

The key thing, obviously, is to eat well and live healthy. Leaving that regimen, however it happens, is going to be bad.

I lived in London for six months and discovered the wonderfulness of pasties. I admit that I would eat pasties whenever I didn't feel like cooking (which was often).

Why a pasty craze never took off here in the U.S., I will never know. Delicious meat in an easy-to-eat package? I'm sold.

I'm trying to introduce meat pies and sausage rolls to the US, but it's not working. The one place in the SF Bay Area that you could get 'em (The New Zealander in Alameda) closed down recently.

Luckily I'm on the east coast next week and I hear there's a pie shop in New York City.

The upper peninsula ("U.P.") of Michigan is the place to get pasties in the United States. It's almost the only region of the United States that includes people who know how to pronounce "pasty."

http://kenanderson.net/pasties/michigan.html

http://www.upper-peninsula-now.com/pasties.html

http://www.exploringthenorth.com/foods/north.html

I've had a pasty in the U.P., and I'd be glad for pasties to become more generally available in the United States. As it is, my wife (who is Taiwanese) makes homemade meat pies, to surprisingly good effect from someone who didn't grow up eating them.

I'm trying to figure out the American resistance to meat pies. I mean, we have corn dogs here.

I don't get it. Is it the prejudice against British food? (I love some good fish and chips every once in a while.)Satisfaction with burgers and fries? Lack of imagination? Not enough exposure?

What is it?

You heard right. It's called Tuck Shop and has 3 locations downtown. 1 in chelsea market, 1 on st. marks (8th st) and 1 on 1st st and 1st ave. Really great meat pies.

We recently discovered empanadas (if you're in the Bay Area, buy 'em frozen at the Milk Pail). Surprisingly similar to pasties.